


Letters from Lily

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Missing Hogwarts Moments [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: Sirius, in his new found freedom, exchanges letters with his godson and finds that he is not exactly like James at all.
Series: Missing Hogwarts Moments [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1407286
Comments: 10
Kudos: 204





	Letters from Lily

James had always been terrible at writing. He had been the champion of one sentence letters. His mother would send him paragraphs and paragraphs, and Remus would have to make him write a response, right there at the breakfast table, or he wouldn’t respond at all. And even then it would usually be, _I’m fine, school is fine, ignore McGonagall’s letter about my detention, she’s got the wrong end of the stick. Love James._

And when Sirius and the rest of them wrote to him in the holidays, they were lucky to get a response at all. ‘Cheers for your letters,’ he’d say, when they saw him again, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had spent several weeks adding, heavily underlined, ’ _at least let me know you are alive_ ’ to the end of every single one. 

Occasionally they might get one from him - brief, with rough arithmancy workings out on the back. _Floo to mine for dinner tomorrow, come whenever_. He was more of a meet up in person kind of bloke. The only point of a letter was to arrange when to chat. 

He’d got a bit better, after school, especially once they’d gone into hiding and he had to fill his time with something. But they were always a little forced, they didn’t sound like him at all - he had clearly had to think about things to say. And they always, always, ended with a request for someone to come and visit, or a suggestion that he could perhaps risk an hour out of the house. It was always Lily who ended up writing and giving the real updates - about Harry’s latest tooth or newest word or how attached he was to whatever toy Sirius had brought him most recently, the passing gossip from other Order members (nothing too sensitive or secret, of course), what she thought about the latest twists on the wireless soap operas, new games they had invented to pass the time, new security spells he needed to be aware of…

So when Sirius had squinted against the Caribbean sun and put down his rum cocktail to write out letters to his godson, he hadn’t really expected a reply. All he’d wanted was to let him know that he’d made it out of the country OK, and to make sure he knew he hadn’t forgotten his responsibilities as a godfather, even if they couldn’t live together yet. 

But Harry’s responses had been excited, lengthy, full of dry humour about his unpleasant relatives and little anecdotes about his friends at Hogwarts and how much he was looking forward to seeing them. He wanted, Sirius realised, for them to know one another, and he saw letters as more than an obligation. 

He sat the beach bar for a long time, frowning slightly at Harry’s letter. There was something so familiar about it - perhaps he had repeated some story or complaint about Dudley? But no, he definitely hadn’t read these specific words before. There was something very charming about Harry going off on a tangent and telling him about smuggling a dragon out of school - he definitely would have remembered. His eyes strayed for a moment on the little loop at the end of the g’s, but then he folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket, leaving a coin on the bar. 

The truth was, it never occurred to Sirius that Harry might be desperate for a parental figure. It never struck him as odd that Harry had wanted to move in with him a mere hour after meeting him, because Sirius had wanted to look after Harry for a very long time. His head had always swirled with fantasies of freedoms and keeping his promises to James. That Harry did not seem to love the people he lived with was a convenient advantage in that respect, and though naturally he was sorry that Harry had grown up unhappily with them (and he had raised his eyebrows at Harry’s flippant remark of, ' _Dudley never learnt as well as me to stay out of swinging reach of Uncle Vernon!_ ’), the letters didn’t seem to him to be anything particularly unusual. 

On the contrary, Sirius firmly believed, walking back along the wide sand, that the familiarity he felt was a little flash of Lily - chatty. Friendly. Sociable. Good at remembering to write conversational, interesting letters. Sirius was quite sure that they knew each other perfectly well already.


End file.
